to at least 942 C.E. The witness was a now-deceased man, Brian Kennerly. In 2002, Kennerly’s family told me of how he often spoke of the occasion when, as he walked through Abbots Bromley on what was a warm, summer’ night, he was confronted by a large black cat—one that he described as the typical “black panther.”
This 1763 illustration depicts a weretiger, a half-human beast originating from Asia.
Not surprisingly, Kennerly was frozen in his tracks. His amazement turned to outright fear when the beast suddenly rose up onto its back limbs, giving it a height of around five and a half feet. The creature reportedly issued a low growl and flicked its dangling front paws in Kennerly’s direction. Notably, Kennerly’s daughter told me her father said that as the ABC rose up, “its back legs changed shape, probably to support it when it was standing upright.” A few seconds later, the creature dropped back to the ground and bounded out of sight.
A similar report, this one from the centuries-old village of Blakeney—in the English county of Norfolk—occurred in 1967. In this case, the witness, who was driving to Blakeney on a cold, winter’s night, caught a brief glimpse of a creature standing at the side of the road that was eerily similar to the one seen by Brian Kennerly fourteen years previously. In this case, the woman said: “It stood like a person, but stooped, but had a cat’s head. Even the pointed ears.”
The final two cases in my files are separated by seven years—1981 and 1988—but the location was the same: the German War Cemetery located within the heavily wooded Cannock Chase, Staffordshire. The Chase has long been a hotbed for weirdness: Bigfoot-type creatures, werewolves, huge serpents, ghosts, UFOs, and much more of a supernatural nature have been reported in the depths of the Chase.
As for the two reports of werecat-type creatures seen at the cemetery, one was a daytime event involving a beast that was black in color, taller than the average man, and seen leaning on one of the gravestones. That is, until it realized it was being watched and it dropped to all fours and raced off into the trees. The second case concerned a van driver crossing the Chase late at night and who was forced to bring his vehicle to a halt—very near the cemetery—as a result of the presence in the road of a huge black cat. It was a cat that stared intently at the shocked driver, until it “sort of jumped onto its back legs.” According to the man, Don Allen, the creature remained in view for no more than about twenty seconds, after which it headed towards the cemetery, making a curious “hopping and bouncing” movement as it did so.
“It stood like a person, but stooped, but had a cat’s head. Even the pointed ears.”
Are infernal werecats really roaming the British Isles? Granted, the number of reports is small. And yet, the witnesses—and, in the case of Brian Kennerly, his family—are adamant that what they encountered were large, black, upright cats that displayed vaguely human characteristics. Perhaps the old myths and legends are not just folklore after all. Just maybe, the monstrous werecat really does roam the old landscapes of the British Isles.
WEREWOLF OF KLEIN-KRAMS
In 1879, Karl Bartsch wrote that in the vicinity of Klein-Krams, near Ludwigslust, Germany, there existed in earlier centuries huge woods that “were so rich with game that the dukes often came to this region to hold their great hunts. During these hunts they almost always saw a wolf who—even though he came within shooting distance—could never be killed by a huntsman. Indeed, they even had to watch as he took a piece of game before their very eyes and—something that was most remarkable to them—ran with it into the village.”
Bartsch continued that, on one particular occasion, a hussar from Ludwigslust was making his way through the village to meet with a man named Feeg. When the unnamed hussar arrived at the home of the man in question, he got far more than he bargained, as Bartsch recorded:
“When he entered the house a flock of children stormed out of the house with a loud cry and hurried out into the yard. When he asked them about their wild behavior, they told him that except for a small boy, no one from the Feeg family was at home, and that he—as was his custom when no one was at home—had transformed himself into a werewolf, and that they were running away from him, because otherwise he would bite them.”
Soon afterwards, Bartsch continued, the much-feared wolf-boy appeared, but by now he was back in his human form. The hussar demanded that the child tell him what manner of devilry was afoot in the village. Although the boy was initially reluctant to say anything at all, he finally relented. In Bartsch’s words: “The child told him that his grandmother had a strap, and that if he put it on he would instantly become a wolf. The hussar kindly asked the boy to make an appearance as a werewolf. At first the boy refused, but finally he agreed to do it, if the strange man would first climb into the loft, so that he would be safe from him. The hussar agreed to this, and to be sure pulled up the ladder with which he had climbed into the loft.”
By Bartsch’s account, the incredible transformation from boy to monster happened quickly:
“As soon as this had happened the boy ran into the main room, and soon came out again as a young wolf and chased away all those who were standing in the entryway. After the wolf had run back into the main room and come back out as a boy, the hussar climbed down and had the Feeg child show him the magic belt, but he could not discover anything unusual about it.”
In no time at all, the astonished and concerned hussar went to a forester in the vicinity of Klein-Krams and told him what he had experienced in the Feeg house. On listening to the tale, the forester, “who had always been present at the great hunts near Klein-Krams, immediately thought about the werewolf who could not be wounded. He now thought that he would be able to kill the werewolf.”
At the very next hunt the forester told his friends, as he carefully inserted a silver bullet into the barrel of his rifle: “Today the werewolf will not escape from me!” His concerned friends looked on in silence.
The boy was reluctant at first to show himself as a wolf, but he eventually agreed to do so by using the magical belt.
According to Bartsch: “The hunt soon began, and it did not take long before the wolf showed himself once again. Many of the huntsmen shot at him, but he remained unwounded. Finally he approached the forester, who brought him to the ground. Everyone could see that the wolf was wounded, but soon he jumped up again and ran into the village. The huntsmen followed him, but the werewolf outran them and disappeared into the Feeg farmyard.”
There was, however, an unforeseen ending to this strange saga of shape-shifting in Germany of centuries past. The werewolf killed by the forester was not the young Feeg boy, after all. Bartsch revealed the twist in the story: “In their search, the huntsmen came into the house, where they found the wolf in the grandmother’s bed. They recognized it from the tail that was sticking out from under the covers. The werewolf was no one other than Feeg’s grandmother. In her pain she had forgotten to take off the strap, and thus she herself revealed the secret.”
